Who Comes First? The Role of the Prefrontal and Parietal Cortex in Cognitive Control
Open accessAbstract
Cognitive control processes enable us to adjust our behavior to changing environmental demands. Although neuropsychological studies suggest that the critical cortical region for cognitive control is the prefrontal cortex, neuro-imaging studies have emphasized the interplay of prefrontal and parietal cortices. This raises the fundamental question about the different contributions of prefrontal and parietal areas in cognitive control. It was assumed that the prefrontal cortex biases processing in posterior brain regions. This assumption leads to the hypothesis that neural activity in the prefrontal cortex should precede parietal activity in cognitive control. The present study tested this assumption by combining results from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) providing high spatial resolution and event-related potentials (ERPs) to gain high temporal resolution. We collected ERP data using a modified task-switching paradigm. In this paradigm, a situation where the same task was indicated by two different cues was compared with a situation where two cues indicated different tasks. Only the latter condition required updating of the task set. Task-set updating was associated with a midline negative ERP deflection peaking around 470 msec. We placed dipoles in regions activated in a previous fMRI study that used the same paradigm (left inferior frontal junction, right inferior frontal gyrus, right parietal cortex) and fitted their directions and magnitudes to the ERP effect. The frontal dipoles contributed to the ERP effect earlier than the parietal dipole, providing support for the view that the prefrontal cortex is involved in updating of general task representations and biases relevant stimulus-response associations in the parietal cortex.
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Frontal dipoles contributed prior to parietal dipoles in a task involving updating working memory to bias processing of stimulus-response mappings mediated by the parietal cortex.
“Frontal dipoles contributed prior to parietal dipoles in a task involving updating working memory to bias processing of stimulus-response mappings mediated by the parietal cortex [78].”
From The role of prefrontal cortex in cognitive control and executive function (2022) · cites this paper as [78]
The Abstract and Dipole Modeling section report that frontal dipoles contributed earlier than the parietal dipole during task-set updating, and interpret this as frontal activity biasing stimulus–response associations in parietal cortex. The paper describes updating task representations, but does not identify the task as updating working memory; that added specificity is not supported by our copy. (LLM, conf=0.85)
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- Authors
- Brass, M., Ullsperger, M., Knoesche, T. R., Cramon, D. Y. V., & Phillips, N. A.
- Affiliations
- Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (DE)
- Concordia University (CA)
- Venue
- Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
- Publisher
- MIT Press - Journals
- Published
- 2005-09-01
- Volume
- 17
- Issue
- 9
- Pages
- 1367-1375
- ISSN
- 0898-929X (ISSN-L)
- 1530-8898
- OpenAlex
- W2118483696
- Semantic Scholar
- d6c3ccbfc94a1dffcf9251208f92a2ace2ccff15
- Cited by
- 236
- References
- 49
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 16 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 11 · 2016: 13 · 2015: 8 · 2014: 12 · 2013: 13 · 2012: 15
- FWCI
- 7.25
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Ghent University Academic Bibliography (Ghent University) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (submittedVersion)
- Max Planck Digital Library (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion)
- MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Cognitive Functions and Memory
- Keywords
- cognitive control, prefrontal cortex, parietal cortex, task switching, stimulus-response associations
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Brain Mapping, Cognition, Cues, Electroencephalography, Electrooculography, Evoked Potentials, Female, Humans, Functional Laterality, Male, Neuropsychological Tests, Parietal Lobe, Reaction Time, Time Factors, Prefrontal Cortex
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